by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We walk on starry fields of white
   And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
   We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
   To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
   Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
   Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
   Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
   We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
   And conquers if we let it.

There’s not a day in all the year
   But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
   To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
   Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
   While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
   Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
   Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
   To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
   To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
   Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
   Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
   As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
   A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

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Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919) began writing poetry at age eight. Her first published work appeared when she was fourteen years old in the New York Mercury. She devoted herself to a life of writing and hosted a literary circle at her home on the Connecticut Sound, Bungalow Court. Her work was at times scandalous for her day. Her collection of love poems was rejected by a Chicago publisher on grounds that it was immoral. It was later published in 1883 with the racy title Poems of Passion. When her poems sold 60,000 copies in two years, her reputation was established as a bestselling writer, even if critics disparaged her work. A natural advocate and enthusiast, Ella was an early spokesperson for animal rights and practiced vegetarianism. In 1918, she traveled to France in support of the war effort to read and lecture for soldiers in the Allied camps.

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